Halves
by End Noesis
Summary: Yue ponders his life with Sakura. Can he love her?


**A/N:** One night as I was listening to Angelfish I thought about Yue and I ended up writing this :) It's been a while since I've watched Cardcaptors and written fanfiction (a good 8 years), so I apologize for some deviation from the canon and the roughness of my craft.

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><p>Halves<p>

"You can love her," Clow Reed had said in an old dream. It was not the question posed by others – _Can you love her?_ But a sincere declaration of what my mind toyed with endlessly for the past few years.

"I made her heart so big that sooner or later it would engulf you," added her father, with Eriol at his side - two halves. It was true. Her heart was a vexing obstacle. Her early embraces suffocating, until they stopped altogether. Her smiles sort of dumb and disturbingly saccharine. Six years of this would have driven me mad had I not found some solace in my other counterpart's existence. Or so I had thought. Yukito's brotherly encouragements of these affections (perhaps to sway them completely away from him) were all the more difficult – as eventually their warmth and love crept to my dormant state behind my Yukito wall.

And when she looked into his eyes, I felt them searching for me.

There were some less than pleasant incidents in those years, keeping her within a distance of comfort. I have never shared a life with a human girl before, especially one so young. You're not supposed to watch her change in the mornings anymore after a certain point. As if I thought anything of it. Kero said otherwise. Had I a growing interest in how she looked like? Perhaps. She was changing too fast. Once small, now lanky and self-conscious; she spent more time in front of mirrors observing herself. I was blameless to want to examine the self-fascination.

She openly argued, joked, made up, and touched Kero. If a vase or other valuable-looking item was broken at my hands, regardless of its worth, she absolved me from any responsibility or guilty even before I began to voice it. Hand-painted, heirloom, antique, gift… it didn't matter. I stopped as the guilt grew, sprouting from some mystery seed, and the desire to incite a reaction went away, for a while.

Kero glared daggers, but these favors only made our encounters rather odd.

"Let it go, Kero. It is you she adores so openly, without reservation. I may have been our master's favorite, but here and now, you are hers. I do not care to challenge you for that place." Her ear had caught my words, but the explanation or apology at the tip of her tongue, whichever it was, went unsaid and a quiet upset look overtook her face for a moment before rebounding with her characteristic joy.

Kero kicked pens about and Sakura held his shaking little golden form and kissed him. Promised something sweet, something new to play. Forgiveness came too easily for my brother.

I don't know why my visits grew in frequency. Perhaps I felt the need to guard her, sensed some imminent danger which never came other in the forms of teenage-hood. She began to understand things then, kindly rebuffing the romantic advances of Tomoyo, rekindling an old friendship with a young boy who had grown up to be (moderately, in my opinion) attractive. Syaoran's breakup with some unknown girl piqued her interest, and the thought of his possible return could be the closest thing to ill I'd ever felt. The taste of bile was preferable to seeing him here. They weren't kids anymore, and he wasn't going to kiss her like one, and he wasn't going to want her like one.

Bile, again.

I knew her glances well, those sad looks searching for the open kindness of Yukito, instead she always met my cold gaze – sharp and ice – to her perplexed green. I used to make her look away when I returned those glances, but with time, too, my eyes grew soft or tired. Her glances became exasperatingly curious and long.

"Is there something wrong?" I asked her once, as she studied me from her bed, from which she half-watched a movie with Kero. Kero was inches from the screen. Her faced flushed, had she not noticed too the length of her observations?

"Nothing."

"Come closer." And so she did, until she sat in front of me. I stared intensely into her face, "Now look at me." Slowly, she did.

"Yue…"

"Shh…" I held my finger to her lip, gently tapped it. A minute or so went on as I studied her closely. The pale pink of her cheeks spread to an unflattering red to her entire face. She bit the corner of her inner lower lip, holding back; she was not brave enough to admonish. So I spoke instead.

"Doesn't my insolence bother you?"

A sputter of words that tripped over themselves as they fought for recognition.

"No, Yue," she began again, "you are so distant. I can't seem to close this space between you and me."

I said nothing.

"Sometimes I look at you, and think about him," she continued.

"Is that all you see when you look at me?" I was Yue long before there was a "Yukito" in this world. They forget. Yukito owned the days, and I lived out the nights. A mutual agreement in times of peace.

It was easy to forget the half that spent it in the other's shadow.

"Um… no… I-I also –" the red of her face did not seem to fade. "I see you. I want to reach out to you, but I don't know how."

"Reach out?" I asked.

"Yue, I'm growing up. I'm sixteen. I'm not the little girl you knew, and being held now by you means something different than it did when you first became my guardian. I wonder if that 'different' is better or worse."

The top of her head reached my shoulders when we stood side by side on silent midnight walks to Tomoyo's, on those nights she craved normalcy in the form of footsteps on the earth instead of the freedom of the skies.

I hoped she stopped growing. It caused all kinds of inconveniences. My entire body served as her shield many times in the past. I wonder if I held her now, how much of little Sakura I could easily sheath with my wings protectively.

"Sometimes you look so lost in thought, sometimes sad," she said. "I can always hug and kiss Kero all I want, but it's not that easy with you. I feel that my coldness toward you may be misinterpreted. I want to be as loving to you, but I don't know if you'd like me to."

_Loving?_ "And these things – hugs and kisses – are you requesting me to accept them?"

_And how would they feel?_ A mental scoff, at the thought of her, her lips, unadulterated by the pigments and chemical scents, on me. They moved too much, fluttering like hummingbird wings. _How could they ever remain still enough for a kiss?_

"No, no-no!" She shook her head. "I am not asking anything of you. Just to know, that you both are special to me in different but equal ways. I don't know a lot about love right now, I'm just learning and failing at being lady-like, too, my brother says. I'm not the most proper or adept but I'm maturing… slowly. Just know, Yue, that I care for you, too. Um, does any of this make sense?"

"No." The color left her face, another explanation to begin again. A smile of treachery formed on mine. There was something more, beneath the jumble of her words.

"Kero and I are brothers," I said. "I have no qualms with you favoring him. How could you not, the way he looks and is? A parent may tell their children that they are loved equally, but it's inevitable that one will stand out. He outperforms the other in school, has better manners, follows his father's footsteps in the family business… the point is, I understand, and I don't want to win that favor."

"No?"

"I'm fine being on the outside, as long as you're safe and he's happy." It was enough for me, and it should be for her.

"What about your happiness?" She had that look again, a condescending sad one if it was from anyone else. From her it was genuine concern.

"I'm not unhappy."

"You know what I mean. I know you're not the type to enjoy little cakes and comic books, because if it was that easy I'd be hauling twice as much for you and Kero. I don't know what I can give you yet, to make you feel just as special as Kero. I'll figure it out one day, but if you can tell me anything to help me out… I'd really like that." She looks down, picking at the blue paint on her nails, and then readjusting a beaded bracelet. "Eriol said I was made for you, so I'll live up to Master Clow Reed's expectations. I promise to -"

Once, long ago, the Dark held me tightly during my angry fits until I gave in and stopped flailing, while the Light and Kero, just a pup, laughed. "_Little moon, you're just a sliver of light against my night."_

Sakura's lips moved too much again, inarticulately but with the best intentions.

"Yue! Yuuuuuuue! Let me go! Yue, I'm your Mistress!"

I held her, because I needed to know how well I could protect her. Because I needed that mouth to close.

"Kero! Kero, help me!" She squeaked as I smothered her voice in my wings. I held her tighter on my lap, no longer a small Sakura, but easily dominated by my embrace.

Kero rolled his eyes, uninterested, and returned to his television. My brother, not quite the knight in shining armor outside his games.

"Little girl, you're a little starlight against the moon." I placed my chin on her head, smoothing out the brown hair strands. Her hair had grown out, but she had only let it reach a few inches past her neck. I'd imagine it longer, grazing above her rounder hips, but I kept these thoughts to myself.

"I'm not little girl anymore!" a small voice said.

But she was, and she was no longer blushing stupidly but laughing the same way Kero made her laugh with his antics. I knew she meant to express something more, something from love, perhaps to me or again to the sleeping Yukito inside of me. I was not ready for such declaration, whichever it was. She was much too young to understand love. Master Reed may have made her for me, but I was not ready to love her. It was easy to like her, however. To favor her face, even her movements, most of which lacked elegance.

The years that passed us by were ghosts in this room. The stuffed animals, replaced with odd things – scents and toiletries that highlighted her features, bringing out the brilliancy of the green of her eyes and the pink of her lips, in her words to Kero. Her hair and limbs grew out as parts of her once-scrawny figure filled in – just enough to notice.

I loosened my grip, but still she stayed, with her head against my shoulder. Her eyes closed.

"One day my heart will find yours and you will love me," she whispered, and before I could react, added: "a much as Kero."

I kept her there, as she rested.

This was only one of many future nights I would hold her. With time she eased into my arms with greater fluidity. She was perfectly right in all her open fragility and unconventional beauty. I would guard her from her own world, and I would take her into mine.

Over the years I knew she would make me love her, in my own way, by my own rules.

In the meantime, I'd enjoy every moment of delightful confusion. Forget the paths that brought her here with me and grow to envy just a little bit the part of her Kero could only claim.

In truth, someday I would want all of her, not just half.

_Little stubborn starlight, can you win the moon when it keeps its careful distance? Is my acceptance of your light, not the deference that makes our relationship? _

_Here, is the half of us that can love you._


End file.
